Semiconductor nanoparticles that can be prepared so as to luminesce in a particle-size-dependent fashion when irradiated with suitable incident light are commonly known as quantum dots. Usually, as the temperature of the nanoparticles is increased, there is a change in the quantum yield for light emission and there may be also a change in the energy and shape of the emission band. The quantum yield can also change depending on the flux of incident light. In particular, quantum dots used in today's applications usually exhibit a pronounced thermal and flux droop, i.e., a significant decrease of the photoluminescence quantum yield with increasing temperatures and with increasing incident light intensities.
It is also known that the particle morphology contributes to the emission properties, but so far this contribution has usually been understood with respect to the relative ease and completeness of epitaxially overcoating emissive seeds with larger bandgap related semiconductors. For example, the poor luminescence performance of tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles has been attributed to the difficulty in perfectly applying a non-interrupted continuous epitaxial layer of inorganic material, rather than to an intrinsic attribute of tetrapod-shaped nanoparticles.